Fans of "The Partridge Family" know Tom Bahler as one of those "augmented"
voices that lent vocal and musical credibility to the songs produced for TV
and records. And while he may not be a household name, it is virtually
impossible to find anyone who hasn't heard at least one song that Tom Bahler
(pronounced Bay-ler) hasn't influenced. Whether as a Writer, Arranger,
Producer, Studio Singer, or all of the above, Tom has worked with giants
such as Elvis Presley, Quincy Jones, The Jackson 5ive, Billy Joel, Cher,
Barbra Streisand, and helped guide acts such as Bobby Sherman, The Monkees
and The Brady Kids. With his brother John, Tom also launched his own 1960s
psychedelic pop band called The Love Generation to a trio of albums and top
100 hits. Tom was gracious enough to spend countless hours reminiscing about
his career with Scott Awley and cmongethappy.com from February through June,
2000. So sit back and enjoy. We'll drive the bus.

Get Happy:How
did you get started in the music business?

Tom Bahler: My brother
and I had big bands while we were in high school. We had a band called
The Moonlighters. It was a 16-piece big band that was started by a friend
of my brother's. When his friend left, my brother kept it, and when my
brother went into the Navy, I took it over. We used to play a lot of gigs
around town – proms, etc. It was a pretty good band and my brother did
a lot of great arrangements for it. We had good personnel and we
worked a lot. That was kind of our first foray into semi-pro music.

GH: What was the music
industry like at the time?

TB: The music industry
was changing a bit. This was early 60s. Folk music was becoming very popular.
You had the Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary, and others. And I liked
it because the music was simple, but the message was strong. The other
thing that interested me was that the girls really liked it. During that
time, we met a lot of people at the Troubadour like Kenny Rogers and Kim
Carnes. The New Christy Minstrels were going strong then and both Kenny
and Kim were in the group. At that time, the group was on the Andy Williams
Show [along with the Osmond Brothers] on NBC, but had to leave because
their touring schedule was so busy. Dave Grusin was Andy’s musical director.
Andy decided to form a new group and called it the Good Time Singers. I
knew a lot of the guys who were chosen to sing and that’s when I got the
call to join them. They wanted a tenor who played bass. But I couldn’t
join then because I was a trumpet major at USC at the time and if I quit
school I could have been drafted into the Vietnam War. That wasn’t going
to work for me.

GH: What did you do?

TB: This was 1966
and my brother John, who is also a tenor, was just finishing up in the
service. I asked him if he would be interested in joining them. He
said sure, so I talked to the group, who just happened to be going through
Washington DC where John was stationed. They auditioned him and hired him
on the spot.

GH: Where did you
move from there?

TB: There was a wonderful
man on Andy’s show named George Wyle, who got an offer from Dick Clark
to be musical director on a new show called Swingin’ Country. It would
be on at noon, 5-days-a-week, and star Roy Clark. George had to turn it
down and, in doing so, recommended John for the job. John wanted me to
be in the group and I arranged my schedule so I could still be in school.
But the producers wouldn’t let me be on camera, because they thought I
looked 12. I was about 23 at the time. So they hired someone else to be
on camera and hired me to do the pre-record. I think the other guy just
lip-synched.

At the time, I also had an operation
that forced me to give up the trumpet for a year and that threw me into
a real tail spin. I was used to playing about 5 – 6 hours a day and now
I had nothing to do. I never really wanted to be a singer – it was just
a way to meet chicks. But John heard of an audition for the Smothers Brothers
Show, so I tried out and was cast as a singer/dancer on the show.
My brother sat me down and talked to me. He said I had the makings of an
excellent career, much like he had started for himself. But I wasn’t going
to get it because I wasn’t available, since I was working on the Smothers
Brothers show. I was only on their first season and then I left. That was
a big leap of faith for me.

GH: How did you and
John form the Love Generation?

TB: I was still on
the Smothers Brothers show when we started the group. We formed the group
with some of the people we knew from the Swingin’ Country show. One of
the girls had an uncle who was a manager and, to make a long story short,
we were given a record contract by Imperial records on the Liberty label.
That’s when we formed The Love Generation.

GH: Who were the other
members of the Love Generation?

TB: We were Mitch
Gordon [a Navy buddy of John’s], Jimmy Wasson, Marilyn Miller [who was
married to Cubby O’Brien from The Mickey Mouse Club], Annie White, John
and myself. We did that for a couple of years. We didn’t really have a
lot of hits, although we did make it on the charts a couple of times. That’s
when my brother and I really stared to write in earnest. The first song
we had out as a single was a song called “Groovy Summertime”, which was
a song my college roommate and I wrote. It rose into the 70s, which was
kind of a neat thing to have happen our first time out. It was playing
on the radio at the same time as the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and it was
running neck in neck for radio call-in requests. I always thought that
was funny because “Light My Fire” is a great rock classic and “Groovy Summertime”
is just a piece of fluff! We had a couple of other songs that made the
charts; two that I wrote and one that Jimmy Webb wrote. We were sort of
waffling on the charts, and we weren’t having the success we wanted, although
we were very well respected within the industry.

GH: Did you ever tour
as The Love Generation?

TB: No, we didn’t
tour. And I think that is one of the reasons that it was difficult for
us to catch on fire. We used to get airplay for everything that we put
out, but we never toured to support it.

GH: Did you do any
TV guest spots?

TB: We did “The Joey
Bishop Show”, Steve Allen’s daytime show, Mike Douglas, etc. We did all
of them!

GH: How long was The
Love Generation together?

TB:I
think from 1967 to about 1969. We had three albums with the Love Generation
and Tommy Oliver was our producer. The first two albums were done with
the full group, although John and I would usually sing everybody’s parts
with them. Then the last album, “Montage”, was just John and myself. We
got on the charts with Jimmy Webb’s song called “Montage”. If you
notice the album cover to Montage, there is a shot of the other members
walking away. That was sort of symbolic of us just deciding to do it ourselves,
since we were singing everybody’s parts anyway.

GH: “Montage” is where
the song, “Let the Good Times In” (from the Partridge Family pilot) made
its first appearance.

TB: That’s right.
About that time (1968–69), the Ford Motor Company was looking for an appealing
way to advertise their cars to the young people. They looked at a lot of
groups of the time, but called us to asked if we were interested. At the
time, Annie didn’t want to travel, and Marilyn had other commitments. So,
John and I auditioned about 400 singers between both coasts. We had no idea how
lucrative this job would be, but at the time we figured, “What the hell!
Whenever you get a chance to do something for a company this big, you should
take it.”

GH: What happened?

TB: Well, the Love
Generation split at that point and we wound up travelling all over the
country for Ford; recording their commercials but also performing live
at sales meetings, etc. Basically we were the opening act for Henry Ford!
He would come out at the meetings and talk and we did a half-hour show
before him. It was like being a rock star without having any of the responsibility.
We flew all over on the company jet. It was a wonderful experience, I’ll
never forget it. We used to record the commercials in New York and Chicago,
but most of us lived in LA, so they moved the recording out here. After
a while, they relied more and more on John and I to hire the band and write
the arrangements. Pretty soon they were having us produce the sessions.
It was wonderful. It was the best thing that happened to us because by
the time that Ford gig was over, John and I were not only successful studio
singers, but we were successful arrangers and producers.